Automobiles using an electric motor as a source of driving forces, such as electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid vehicles, have been popularized in recent years. Those automobiles have a secondary cell mounted thereon for supplying electric power to an electric motor. Thus, the secondary cell should be charged as needed. In order to charge this secondary cell, a charging connector is provided on a vehicle body. When a charging plug provided at an end of a charging cable extending from a power source is fitted into the charging connector, the power source and the secondary cell are connected to each other so that the secondary cell is charged.
Such a charging connector is often disposed on a side surface of a vehicle body in consideration of the accessibility upon attachment of the charging plug to and detachment of the charging plug from the charging connector. In this case, electric cables (wire harness) extending from the charging connector to the secondary cell are desired to be disposed along the side surface of the vehicle body in order to widen an inside space of the vehicle. Therefore, there has been known a charging connector assembly in which terminal portions of electric cables are welded perpendicular to terminal pieces of the charging connector such that the electric cables extend along a side surface of a vehicle from the charging connector (see, e.g., Patent Literature 1). Such a charging connector assembly is manufactured by first welding a core wire exposed at an end of an electric cable to a terminal piece and then inserting the terminal piece into a terminal receptacle of a housing.
In this charging connector assembly, the electric cable connected to the charging connector is a high-voltage cable, which has a large diameter. Thus, the electric cable is stiff and is unlikely to be bent. Therefore, if the terminal piece is to be inserted into the terminal receptacle of the housing in a state in which the electric cable runs on another electric cable, then forces are applied to a welded portion between the core wire of the electric cable and the terminal piece, where stresses are concentrated. Accordingly, cracks occur at an interface between the terminal piece and the core wire and thus result in contact failure and the like.
In order to prevent an electric cable from running on another electric cable, when a terminal piece is inserted into a terminal receptacle of a housing, an operator should work such that the electric cable to be inserted does not run on another electric cable while confirming the position of the electric cable that has been attached to the terminal piece. Thus, a cumbersome routing operation is required.